No, still no teeth. Not a one.

Happy Thanksgiving to our U.S. readers. Hope your holiday was enjoyable and peaceful. My family gathering was not entirely without incident, but to my chagrin, that's my fault. But let me set the record straight. For the last time: I did not stab my father with a fork.
It was just a poke, a mere prod. I did not break skin. I apologized, and my dad graciously accepted.
But you'd think he would know better, after more than a decade, than to call my alma mater "an all-girls school". I reflexively exclaimed, "Women's College!" and punctuated this correction with my fork, tines striking the back of his hand. Ooops. I am not proud of this incident. Mea maxima culpa, sorry Dad.
Now if he had been in between me and the mashed potatoes or the pumpkin pie, no doubt there would have been blood on the walls. "And I would not be convicted by a jury of my peers..."

Baby Gigi's vocabulary continues to expand. She absolutely melted my heart the first time she looked into my eyes as she made the babysigns gesture for "more" and said, "mah-MEE?" Before I had time to burst into tears, she started grabbing at my neckline. Okay, I get it, she's hungry. Now she uses "Mah-mee?" and the sign anytime she's peckish. I can live with having my title equated with "feed me," really.
In addition to variations on the theme of Mommy, she has "Daddy", "kee" for kitty, "kay" for her grandparents' dog Casey, and of course, "uh-oh" for "I dropped it, please pick it up so I can drop it again." As long as she holds off on "no" a little while longer, I'm happy.

I am pleased to report that we have heard from Queen Joolieoolie. Her lovely daughter was born healthy and happy and of course adorable. Baby girls rock. Welcome to the world, Princess K.

They really do absorb more than we give them credit for. We were driving out to the countryside last weekend for foliage-peeping and whatnot, and on the radio R.E.M. was performing "Man on the Moon". From the back seat, a tiny voice popped up, "Ya ya ya..."

Oh, and still no teeth.

Happy Thoughts and pixie dust and whatnot to the aforementioned Queen Joolieoolie, who is scheduled to have a C-section tomorrow. They did pretty good job with kid #1, who looks like somebody left his daddy in the dryer too long. Here's hoping that all goes well.

Great news! We finally know where we're going to live next year. The folks at HR decided, I guess, that if I couldn't get a promotion I could get a nice consolation prize.
So, remember that Tom Cruise movie where he's some kind of resort bartender? And that Beach Boys song from the soundtrack got stuck in everyone's head for the rest of the decade? You know, the one that sounds like a Caribbean travel agency's jingle?
Well, my next contract sends me to a place listed in that song. For three years.
SUPER SWEET!
The one downside to all of this is that I have six months to get myself ready for perpetual swimsuits...oh gaaaaaaaaawd. Considering my title as the reigning Lady Lardbottom of the Grand Duchy of Buttox, I have my work cut out for me.

"Gigi" and I have been sick all week. She got a cold for her birthday, so no trick-or-treating. I got the cold from her the following day. So after All Snots Day, we've been keeping a low profile and hoping not to spread it to her daddy - who is pounding orange juice like the Anti-Anita Bryant. Thursday she went for her twelve-month checkup at the pediatrician, and the flu shot made her miserable all day Friday. Saturday morning she woke up in the wee small hours of the morning. Ooooogh.
A few weeks ago, after I wrote about my limited tolerance for "The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round," my homegirl Queen Joolioolie wrote me about her son, who at one point could only be soothed in the car with TWOTBGRAR. She and her husband would be driving around with the boy, inventing more and more verses for the song. Ah, yes. I feel your pain, sister. This week has taught me that a sure-fire method for wooing a reluctant Gigi to sleep is "The Lion Sleeps Tonight."
So there I was at 4:30 a.m. Saturday trying to invent new variations of "in the nursery, the baby's nursery, the baby goes to sleep" that didn't involve "the mommy goes insane..."
So my sleep schedule, such as it has been over the last year, is now pretty whacked. And the worst part about being sick? Coffee doesn't taste right. Maybe I can persuade my local Starbucks to whip me up a no-foam Robitussin soy latte.

Some folks really go nuts when celebrating their kids' milestones, but this is over the top. We just had the family over for dinner and cake. Sheesh!

Happy Halloween! I'm the scariest thing on the block right now. My little girl got a cold for her birthday, so she's up throughout the night. I look like a panda with a freebase problem. Now I'm starting to feel a bit of a tickle at the back of my throat. Excuse me, I have to wash down all that leftover candy with a gallon of vitamin C...

Still no teeth. Just in case you were wondering.

Outraged. Mind-blown, gobsmacked, rip$h!t, bug-eyed outraged am I.
Why? Because it's a week before Halloween, the detritus left in the stores is already on clearance - except for the candy, natch! - and it appears that there is no one left in a 25-mile radius with instant fake cobweb stuff. One store I went to last week didn't even have a Halloween display up anymore.
And what is out there? Christmas stuff. Slowly taking over the shelves in every store I've been to in the last two weeks, the "holiday" stuff is starting to rear its gaudy, fiber-optic fake-snow-encrusted head.
It's revolution time.
Honestly, people, Christmas Creep is officially out of control. It's no longer a random Santa lurking on the edges of the Back-to-School stuff (which barely tailgates on the 4th of July). It's garlands and pinecones and tacky little Dickensian villages (without the open sewers and industrial-revolutionary soot everywhere). And they're on the "seasonal" shelves in my local craft store, outgunning the jack-o-lanterns and witches by five shelves to one.
I mentioned this at one of the stores I was shopping in last week, and the guy said, "I am from Sicily. If you had a store that had one holiday decoration up before the previous holiday was over, nobody would ever shop there again."
Hear hear. Far be it from me to endorse a wholly Sicilian approach to the problem; retailers may keep their knees intact. But by God, people, if we all refused to buy anything with a holly branch or a candy cane on it until the fourth Friday in November, maybe, just maybe, the Powers That Be would show a little restraint.
Who's with me?

"Gigi" is 51 weeks old now. She's really getting the hang of this walking thing. Still no teeth, despite much wailing and gnashing of gums. Some garment-rending will no doubt be part of this process as well.
In the past few weeks, when I'm not chasing her down (or downing a chaser), I am looking at my options for returning to work. We're hoping to go back to Europe, just not quite so far east if we can swing it. My husband would like to continue telecommuting, and we need a compatible time zone for that.
But man oh man. Top three ways to pummel one's self-esteem into the mud: read too much Sylvia Plath while listening to early Tori Amos on a rainy day; stand in your undies before a three-way dressing room mirror; dust off and update your resume after two years in a $h!tty job and one year of extended diaper detail.
(Okay, in all fairness, the first year of that two-year Baltic stint was not so awful. Yes, it was the coldest winter on record since the second world war, but at least my boss had interpersonal skills and realistic, concrete goals I could fulfill.)
I have a strong sense of what I want out of this job hunt, but I just don't know how to get it. I mean, you can't really tell HR, at least not in writing, "I took one for the team, it got me nowhere and nearly destroyed my health; you [insert epithet of choice]s OWE ME BIGTIME. Anyone suggestions about how to phrase that diplomatically, kindly forward to purplescareblog@yahoo.com. In the meantime, I'm going to borrow some of my daughter's Baby Mozart for Big Brains CDs and try my hand at Word's Resume Wizard. Wish me luck!

Gigi's uncle has informed me that the song stuck in my head two posts ago is in fact by Lynyrd Skynyrd. I'd be even more appreciative if that knowledge would knock the damn song out. Argh.

Tequila Time! HR has informed me that I am not getting promoted. Naturally I am not happy about this at all. I will refrain from further blogging on the subject just now, since I don't want to get carpal tunnel flareup from typing the horrific stream of obscenities which would so richly describe my feelings. Try me again tomorrow.

I've had a song stuck in my head for most of the day. It's by one of those 70's Southern Rock bands that all sound the same so I don't know who it is. But the words are Oh won't you give me three steps, gimme three steps Mister, gimme three steps towards the door/Gimme three steps, gimme three steps Mister, and you'll never see me no more...
You see, she's done it. She took her first steps today. Tiny, mincing, little-bitty steps, just three of them. Thus begins her journey of a thousand miles. I am so proud I could burst.
I am toast.

I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth. Okay, I do know wherefore, it's just a long story. Longtime PS readers will recall that part of my motivation for this little sabbatical, aside from the arrival of Gigi, was a need to take a break from my job for a little while. I was in desparate need of some perspective, and oh by the way I was stressed out of my mind.

I only have a few months left before I have to go back to work. Yes, have to. We went from DINK (dual income, no kids) to SITCOM (single income, tiny child, oppressive mortage) in a very short space of time. And it's not just the finances. Deep down, as much as I adore my daughter, I require conversation with real polysyllabic words on a daily basis.

So I see an office building on the horizon. The bad news is that I don't know where I'll be assigned. The good news is that I don't have to go back to work for the same person. The bad news is that my next assignment will be largely determined by whether or not I am awarded a promotion after my last assignment. Why is that bad news? Again, longtime PS readers will recall that administration and HR matters are not my prior boss's strong suit. In point of fact, my performance evaluation could have been written more accurately and to greater effect by a chimpanzee with cuneiform tablets and a crate of whisky.

So not only am I uncertain of the future, I am being haunted by the unpleasant past. Some time in the next two weeks I expect to hear from HR about whether I got promoted. I have a cautiously optimistic bottle of champagne in the fridge and a pessimistic bottle of tequila standing by. I just have to realize that there is nothing I can do about the situation; I just have to accept that it is in the hands of Higher Powers and I will know the result in due time.

And yes, this is one of those times where I find there are advantages to being married to a Red Sox fan. If you ever want to be with someone who understands wild mood swings, gnawing doubt, helplessness, and euphoria laced with the expectation of crushing defeat, but you can't afford their lithium prescriptions, just look around Red Sox Nation. Trust me on this.

Still no teeth. But she's standing up without assistance and taking tentative little not-quite steps before falling on her cute little keister.
Gigi's increasing mobility is not just wracking the nerves of the bipeds around her. No, the cat's re-evaluating her opinion of the little blond interloper. Before, the cat figured, "Well, it's getting my lap time, but it's leaving me alone and it's not going after my food. Eh, okay." Now Gigi is taking interest in her fellow quadriped. And we've caught her in the cat's dish more than once. (Well, I suppose if it's keeping the kitty fat, it can't be totally devoid of nutritional value for the baby, right?) So far, the cat can still move faster than the baby can crawl. That's not stopping Gigi's pursuit. On the bright side, the cat is declawed, so she can't damage the baby too badly.
And you have not seen eye-popping, toothache-inducing, belly-laughing cute until you've seen my baby try to give the cat her pacifier.

Happy New Year from all of us at Purple Scare to our Jewish readers.

Yeah, I switched templates. It was late, I was tired, and frankly I was bored with the old one. I'll clean it up later. Cheers.